NBA owners

For the NBA players union, the idea of a team-by-team hard salary cap — as is seen in the NFL and NHL — was a “blood issue.” They saw it as a way owners were trying to keep down salaries and force more non-guaranteed contracts. Some owners were insistent on a hard cap, and that has…

NBA owners and players sat down for two hours in a New York hotel meeting room Tuesday and did not talk specifics, rather focusing on general concepts and ideas. That covered both the split of revenue and the salary cap system, both sides said. If you want, go ahead and take that as a sign…

The traditional defining moment of the end of NBA lockout is the handshake between David Stern and Billy Hunter, followed by some sort of blathering about the “partnership” going forward. Until now, with a defined percentage of revenues going to players, there was something to be said about the legitimacy of that partnership. When league…

The players are not winning the lockout, they are giving back and are still faced with being asked to give a lot more or not get paid. The owners are not winning the lockout, they are cutting off their nose to spite their face, killing the momentum the league had generated to get a financial…

Right now, the biggest job for union president Derek Fisher and NBA Commissioner David Stern is keeping their charges in line. Stern’s trying to keep a muzzle on Dan Gilbert and Mark Cuban, which is akin to wrestling alligators. On the other side, there are 450 young guys, most with twitter accounts. There is pressure…

When the NFL was locked out during the summer, Drew Brees was front and center at the negotiating table, then standing in front of the cameras talking after the meetings. Tom Brady was one of the guys to file anti-trust lawsuits against the league. While in the end Jeff Saturday did the dirty work of…

So if you’re looking for few rays of sunshine poking through the clouds of the lockout, here you go — the two sides are going to meet again Tuesday. Things have not gone well at recent sessions, but at least they are talking. If that bargaining session goes well they could meet again on Wednesday,…

David Falk is right. He went a little Dave Mason on us, but he’s right. It’s not that hard for most of us to imagine an NBA labor deal getting done because we can see the middle ground pretty clearly. We can all pretty much guess where a deal will land. But yet, both sides…

Unless there is a handshake deal in place between the NBA and its players union by the first couple days of next week, there is no chance the NBA season starts on time. There’s not enough time to pull it off. Nobody really expects a deal in place by then (it’s not even known if…

I’ll admit, it’s hard for me to be optimistic about the NBA lockout prognosis right now. As I explained on twitter, every time I get hopeful I feel like Charlie Brown running up to kick the football, and David Stern is playing the role of Lucy. But there are some reasons to be optimistic that…

We all knew it was coming, but it doesn’t make it any easier to report. Especially when you now consider that regular season games will almost certainly be postponed if not lost. The NBA announced it has officially and indefinitely postponed the start of NBA training camps (that were to start Oct. 3) and has…

Fans, we’re feeling pressure. Later on Friday the official news will come down that the preseason has been postponed and the first preseason games have been canceled. While that seems like it should be pressure to us, it may not be to Billy Hunter and David Stern. The cancellation of games — even regular season…

We might have guessed this based on the fact that Friday the NBA is going to postpone the start of training camps and cancel some preseason games, but union head Billy Hunter said things are not really going well in negotiations. Hunter spoke with Chris Sheridan — who is far more optimistic about a deal…

Out in Las Vegas for the past couple of weeks at the Impact Compeitive Training Series (affectionately known as the “lockout league”), it has been about NBA players staying in shape for the start of the season, sharpening their game, getting in some run. Now everybody will have a lot longer to hone that edge.…

Tomorrow could be black Friday for the NBA. After a lengthy but apparently fruitless negotiating session on Thursday the NBA is set to announce the postponement of training camps and cancellation of the first two weeks of preseason games on Friday. According to a Yahoo report there is going to be a conference call with owners…

Based on the slow-go turn in lockout negotiations, it is safe to say that we’re officially on the clock, a backwards timetable to the earliest-possible start to the NBA season. Those involved in the process are virtually unanimous in a two-week timetable being necessary for agreement-into-final draft and then a union vote. Conversations with others…

It’s starting to feel a little like “Groundhog Day” around here. No matter what we expect, we keep ending up back in the same place. Again the NBA and its players union met on Thursday, again for more than five hours, and again the meeting ended with little talk of progress. There are no new…

You know what will really drag this lockout out and risk a full NBA season? Two things, one being owners fighting amongst themselves and not agreeing to a deal because of it, something we may already have seen some of (although it was denied later). The other is players fighting amongst themselves and against the…

Back in 2005, when the last NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement was put in place — teams could waive one player and not have to pay the luxury tax on that player’s salary. (The player still got the money on his contract and the teams did not get salary cap relief.) Everyone called it the Allen…

The good news is the owners and players are back in the same room talking again. On Thursday that will include the leadership of both sides — Commissioner David Stern and Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver for the owners, union president Derek Fisher and union Director Billy Hunter. Some attorneys and economists from both sides will…

The only way there is going to be an NBA season — whether full or partial — is if the owners and players keep talking and hammering out their differences. So this tweet that owners and players will sit down and start talking again is a positive. Chris Broussard of ESPN broke the news on…

Before last week’s big meeting on Tuesday, there was a lot of optimism in the air — plenty of people were suggesting a labor deal could be close (whether they meant to tweet it or not). Then Tuesday broke up with both sides disappointed. The players agreed to drop their share of basketball related income…

If you’ve followed the lockout at all you’ve heard the refrain: The agents all hate union head Billy Hunter. They want to be aggressive and use decertification — destroying the union to save it. They will run over Hunter to get what they want. That’s never really been true, not totally anyway. What NBA player…

It’s part of what is behind the NBA lockout dragging out to threaten actual games — there are owners that want to exert their ultimate leverage, the loss of paychecks. There are some owners that want to hurt the union, to break it. The theory goes that when the players start missing paychecks, they’ll cry…

The split among the owners — and there is a split among the owners on what should be in the next labor deal — is not as clean and not along all the lines most think. The conventional wisdom goes that the profitable big market teams oppose a hard salary cap because they like their…